Three Questions To Answer Before Committing To SEO
By Anna Johnson on October 23rd, 2008Want our firm, Kikabink, some other search engine optimization company, or someone on your staff to assist with your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts? Well, before you get your SEO program underway, it’s a good idea to have clear answers to these three (3) questions:
1. What is your goal?
Sure, it might be higher rankings… but it probably isn’t. It’s more likely to be increasing qualified traffic to your website, right? Unfortunately, some companies get sold on the promise of higher rankings… and indeed they get higher rankings… but for keywords that don’t generate any meaningful or qualified leads. Your best bet is to ensure your SEO provider understands what your true goal is, and not to be ‘wowed’ by meaningless promises of high rankings.
Sadly, SEO consultants and clients can often get caught up in details and metrics that, at the end of the day, are irrelevant to the true goal. Perhaps more than in any other area of marketing, it can be easy to fixate on rankings, click through rates, keyword density and other statistics, that guide us towards – but in no way signify our arrival at – our goal.
So before you get started with SEO, I suggest being very clear about what you (really) want.
2. When do you want to achieve your goal?
Once you’ve defined your goal, the next question is when do you want to achieve it. Depending on how competitive is your market from a SEO perspective, getting higher, meaningful rankings may take several months. Getting to the first page, or in the first few spots on the first page, may take several more.
Now it’s not unheard of for companies in highly competitive fields to leap from nowhere to the first page of results within 6 months. But there are all kinds of reasons for jumps of this magnitude, and it’s not wise to assume it will happen for your site. So, in general, it’s wise to view SEO as a long-term process that requires continued effort.
On the other hand, if you need desperately need more traffic, you may be better off using another means of getting it e.g. advertising, partnering or joint-venturing with others, etc.
3. What are you prepared to pay (not just in money) to achieve your goal?
You didn’t really believe SEO was free did you? Like anything worthwhile, there are costs involved – whether in terms of your (or your staff’s) time, the costs of engaging someone to implement the raft of activities that SEO involves, or other resources. And keep in mind that just because you hire an SEO firm, you may still need to do plenty of work yourself. In fact, it’s all too common for companies to hire SEO consultants who, as promised, give them plenty of advice on what to do – and how to do it – in order to achieve higher rankings. Problem is, those companies don’t have the resources to implement all that advice.
Someone has to optimize the website… someone has to install the analytics scripts… someone has to upload the optimized pages to the website… someone has to write the press releases and articles… someone has to distribute those press releases and articles… someone has to monitor the SEO performance.
And someone has to manage all these people and processes.
Are you going to do that? Is your SEO consultant going to do it? Apart from the budget required to get your SEO firm’s advice… do you have the budget to implement their advice?
All in all, when evaluating the extent to which you wish to pursue SEO – and the return on investment (ROI) you expect – keep in mind the costs involved.
Now for the good news: if you CAN answer each of these questions – and your answers indicate that SEO is well worth the effort – you are well on your way to implementing an unstoppable SEO ‘machine’. A machine that will consistently pump out the necessary content, attract the right back-links, and do everything required to lift your search engine rankings.
